


Beyond The Firelight

by beetle



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 09:04:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>#25. Methos. A desert country, per Tabaqui's request. It started out as a few linked vignettes, and turned into, well, a bunch of linked vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond The Firelight

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: There can be only one . . . and that one isn't me.  
> Notes/Warnings: Post-”Horsemen”. Disregards Highlander: The Source. Set in the future. How far? Well, let's just say the Sun is a lot closer to its death, than its birth.

The First Day

  
  
Naked but for rags and burns, carrying only a sword and a laser pistol, the stranger staggers away from the fiery wreck of his vessel on blistered, mostly skinless feet.  
  
He doesn't remember who he is, where he came from, or why he should be so badly burned, but he does remember one thing: he has unfinished business in this place. The time of the final Gathering is upon the last two remaining Quickenings.  
  
Overhead, a sun blazes; huge--a swollen ball, like a radioactive blood orange of nightmarish proportions.  
  
He starts walking in the direction the faint, fingernail-shadows of the wreckage lay, sliding down dunes and crawling up them. Leaving behind charred bits of himself like cast off clothing.  
  
  


Day 3

  
  
Dusty and dehydrated, he staggers up the last of the dunes, foot blindly following foot in an effort to keep him alive for long enough to--to--  
  
  
He doesn't know, though he supposes he will when the moment is upon him. For now, it's enough that he must walk under this surrealistic sun, his skin regenerating at a rate that should seem unnaturally fast, but doesn't. It is meet that he should heal so quickly. Should walk and walk for days under blazing sun and icy star without thirsting, freezing or starving to death.   
  
  
To walk until he collapses, unbreathing.  
  
  
Only to rise again with a gasp.  
  
  
Then stagger on across the blazing red hell once more.  
  
  
It is meet, and it is enough.  
  
  


Day 10

  
  
His eyes, still sharp, spot the first barely alive scrub-weed that signals an oasis when his foot, questing for purchase in sand that's actually been replaced by crumbling hard-pan and gravelly rock, turns. Spills him to the desert floor.  
  
  
There he lay, unmoving, waiting for the sun to turn him to liquid, then powdery dust. For his body to die, and then live again, a little less strong and a little less of it.  
  
  
“حمل لي عبر الصحراء,” he husks in a voice as gone as his fevered mind. Doesn't know what he's said, or even what language it's in, if any at all. It hardly matters. One doesn't need knowledge or language to die.  
  
  
When strong, gentle hands turn him over, he's blinded by awful red light. The light of this desert world, this dying Hell he'd left so long ago, he's one of the few sentient being who remembers it even exists.  
  
  
He cries out in extremis.  
  
  


Night 10

  
  
He yet lives.  
  
  
He is surrounded by relative cool and damp, his blurry vision a mottling of shifting shadows and earth-tones. He can hear voices, feel a cool breeze that means night. From the corner of his aching eyes, he can see a glow against the dimness: a fire.  
  
  
An animal lows mournfully from nearby and several others take up the call. He can hear laughter, low and musical, unworried.  And the dramatic, universal tones of someone telling a ribald story.  
  
  
He opens parched, tender lips and can feel moisture on the air. His eyes slips shut.  He is safe.  It is enough.  
  
  


Day 11

  
  
When next he awakens, he's in a tent that should be explosively hot, but isn't.  The walls heave gently in the baked desert zephyrs.  
  
  
There's a boy kneeling next to him, looking mildly concerned despite his round, dancing eyes. He's wearing a long, loose-fitting off-white tunic and patterned dun-and-white sleeveless cloak.  A jaunty, but functional periwinkle blue headscarf covers his head and shoulders.   
  
  
 _Some sort of nomad,_  the stranger thinks, glancing around him at the grey, high-walled tent around him.  It's rather too large for one person, or even two, with at least one partition the stranger can see, and several pallets.  A desert dormitory, of sorts.  
  
  
And this must be the boy whose pallet the stranger has appropriated.  
  
  
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he says formally, his voice rasping but not as badly as he might have expected, all things considered. The concern fades from the boy's face and he brightens, gabbling something out in a choppy, sing-song sort of language with far too many glottal stops.  
  
  
In fact, he sounds like a fox swallowing a very vocal song-bird.  And he seems to radiate life and energy, as if this moment of relative stillness is a rare hiatus between . . . whatever activities he would normally be engaged in, were it not for the stranger's presence.  
  
  
“You're rather charming, but I'm afraid--”  _I don't understand bugger-all you're saying_ , he means to croak.  The boy's puzzled, but attentive face follows him into another deep sleep.  
  
  


Day 12

  
  
"Chanu'ua" seems to be the boy's name, and that's as far as they get when the stranger next wakes, before the boy--before _Chanu'ua_  determinedly attacks him with a spoon and a clay bowl filled with broth.  
  
  
It's savory, with herbs, and some sort of meat. It's  _delicious_ , and the stranger smiles after the first mouthful to show that he's grateful for the food--for  _everything_ \--and the boy returns it, innocently, dazzlingly. The kind of smile the stranger is somehow sure he hasn't seen in . . . more years than the boy could count.  
  
  
Chanua'ua gabbles out something else--clacking and incomprehensible, like before, but he looks bloody damned lovely doing it--all graceful hands and shining eyes. This enchanting monologue ends on a gentle interrogative.  He holds the bowl forward.  
  
  
“Chanu'ua, is it?”  The boy seems surprised and pleased that the stranger got his name right, and he nods encouragingly. “I'll be sure to finish every drop.”  
  
  
He accepts the bowl, which is worth another of those dazzling smiles. It may be days or even weeks before the stranger recovers his full strength, whatever that may be, but the interested stirring between his legs reassures him that recover he  _will_.  
  
  
“Mai'ai.”  Chanu'ua nods again. He watches the stranger finish every drop.  
  
  


Day 37

  
  
They call themselves the Peoples, and they are pastoral herders.  
  
  
Divided into tribes and clans (though according to Chanu'ua, his clan are rather many too for a traditional clan, but smaller than an two- or three-clan tribe) they skirt the western edge of the vast desert onto which the stranger crashed.  They occasionally, but not often, venture into the deep desert when their usual water sources are low.  One such venture led to the stranger's rescue.  
  
  
Once the stranger is recovered enough to walk--though astonished by the speed of his recovery, the Peoples don't seem frightened or even wary of him--they resume the search for sustenance for themselves, and their massive herds of woolly, hardy ruminants.  
  
  
The ruminants are called beshwa (the stranger's fragmented mental library supplies the words  _goat_  and  _camel_ , but also tells him beshwa are too large to be the former, and too even-tempered to be the latter), and seem to thrive on the scrubby vegetation that grows on the desert fringes and oases, and in the foothills of the distant mountains.  
  
  
It is these foothills the Peoples make for, as the summer season approaches.  The oasis at which the stranger collapsed is at the beginning of the last leg of their journey east, and so they think him a good luck omen.  They think he is  _god-touched_ , for the fact that the desert hadn't killed him, and that he's healed so quickly from his prolonged exposure.  Of his height or his paleness they make nothing, but that he is from far, far beyond the desert.  They do not seem to care  _how_  far, which is just as well, since the stranger couldn't possibly pantomime:  _I crashed here in a flying metal ship from beyond the stars._  
  
  
At any rate, they seem willing to accept him into their clan. This, the stranger has gleaned from many hours of back and forth with the effervescent and tireless Chanu'ua.    
  
  


Day 40

  
  
Chanu'ua and a few of his friends seem utterly fascinated with the stranger's eyes.  He does not know what to make of this, or even what color his eyes are until Ar'rueen, Chanu'ua's grandmother and the head of the clan, gives him a piece of polished, beaten metal to use as a mirror when he insists on attempting to shave.  
  
  
In the red, red light of sunset, the face he sees is tanner he's used to--at least he  _thinks_  it is.  It is lean, patchily-bearded and hawkish.  The eyes that stare back at him seem to shift from green to brown to grey.  They aren't familiar at all.  
  
  
Sighing, he puts his somewhat dull flint knife to his throat, and scrapes manfully upward.  
  
  


Day 55

  
  
Both during his rapid recovery, and in the moon or so since, he has attempted to make himself useful to those who saved him from an eternity of burning and death in the desert.  He helps them with their tents and their beshwa; by fetching and hauling water.  He even tries his hand at cleaning and tent-mending, though the women seem not to know what to make of the silent, no-nonsense help of a god-touched man.  
  
  
But he learns fast, and the lives of the Peoples are hard.  His efficiency and general competence are quickly taken for granted by all he shares a task with.  
  
  
He is pleased that no one yet has use for his skill with the huge sword that is his sole possession.  The pistol and replacement cartridges he'd lost early in his journey, and he's not sorry. Pistols are, in his opinion, a coward's weapon. Especially when the enemy isn't likely to have them, as well.  
  
  
Which makes him wonder why he's so implacably sure there  _is_  an enemy here at all. Not the bands of raiders and bandits that sometimes attack the clans. Not even Eha'Eha, the broad-shouldered boy who glowers at him every time he talks or sits with Chanu'ua at the evening fires.  
  
  
No, there's some . . .  _unknown_ , out there. Waiting for him, searching for him. . . .  
  
  
But for the fact that he's only slowly making headway with their language, before another moon has passed, he fits in like he'd never lived anywhere but with the Peoples.  
  
  


Day 74

  
  
"Neh'ole," Chanu'ua says, snickering.  
  
  
The Peoples are waiting the passing of the noon hours in the shade of a menhir, one of many. Coming down out of the dunes to the sight of them--the halfway mark between the last oasis and the mountains--framed by the violent red sunlight, had aroused a strange sense of homecoming in the stranger's bones.  
  
  
Now, in the relative cool of their long shadows, the stranger is trying to get the history of the great stones from an amused, but ever-patient Chanu'ua.  
  
  
Considering that he only understands one word out of every ten--and that only if Chanu'ua speaks with exaggerated care--the going isn't all  _that_  slow.  So far he's learned the words for 'menhir' and 'henge' are  _ku'pohaku_  and  _nui ku'pohaku_  respectively, in the language of the Peoples.  
  
  
Or at least he thinks that's what they are, until he tries to say them, and sends Chanu'ua off to the races again, his dark eyes nearly squinting shut from laughter, the beads and stones in his braids flashing and clicking, his cheeks dimpled in a wide, white smile. . . .  
  
  
“By the gods of your people, you are lovely,” the stranger says, and Chanu'ua stops giggling to gaze at him curiously.  
  
  
“E'aha?” he asks in that wide-eyed, attentive way of his, and the stranger gestures at Chanu'ua's face, then makes a goofily enraptured face of his own while pointing to Chanu'ua.  
  
  
Judging from the look Chanu'ua's giving him, his message doesn't get across well at all.  
  
  
“Erm.” The stranger grabs a dried piece of scrub-wood. "Well, I never was an artist.  I don't think. But here goes."  He means to attempt a likeness of Chanu'ua's face in the dust-covered hard-pan: the bright, round eyes, dimpled cheeks and pug nose. The stubbornness of his jaw and kindness of his mouth. The braids with their beads and bits of semi-precious stones. The--  
  
  
Chanu'ua lays a warm, gentle hand on the stranger's bony, pale wrist, and smiles. There's understanding in his eyes now, and a wondering sort of happiness. With his other hand, he brushes the stranger's dusty, grown-out hair out of his face and looks long and ponderously. Then he says something almost too soft for the stranger to hear, even if he could understand it.  
  
  
Then Ewo'om and Ar'rueen are calling everyone to come get their share of the afternoon meal. It isn't until Ar'rueen glances at their linked fingers that the stranger realizes Chanu'ua forgot to let go of his hand.  
  
  
Only . . . he has the feeling Chanu'ua hadn't forgotten at all.  
  
  


Night 90

  
  
It is long, and unwieldly in some respects, but it fits him like instinct, is an extension of his arm.  To use it is to forget that he's forgotten anything. His muscles remember how to move, and that is what matters.  That is enough.  
  
  
Whatever bits of himself burned off in the desert, he still has his not inconsiderable skill with the large sword that accompanied him from places unknown.  A couple hours before dawn, more nights that not, he slips out of the camp with a nod for the sentries, goes out into the desert a little way, sword strapped to his back, deadly and cold.   
  
  
He is, he feels, correct in reacquainting himself with his weapon where and when the eyes of the Peoples cannot see him. But he is not unaware of the admiring eyes that sometimes sneak and watch him.  
  
  


Day 93

  
  
The market town isn't really that, but more of a large trading city on the long, hard-scrabble plain before the foothills of the mountains.  There are many narrow small stone dwellings for the clans and traders that maintain households there year round, and many large tents and pens for visitors and livestock.  
  
  
 _Like Iskenderun,_  the stranger thinks as he's swept along the narrow main thorough-fair. Many members of the clan call out to family and friends that married into other clans and tribes of the Peoples. Vendors call out to buyers, parents to wayward children.  
  
  
To the stranger, unused as he is to any faces but the few dozen in Chanu'ua's clan, and the sterile, stark silence of the desert, it's a bit overwhelming. And though it would be impossible to get completely lost--even in a place so narrow and sprawling--the stranger feels a faint flutter that would be panic, were he not so sanguine.  
  
  
Would be loneliness, if time itself hadn't branded solitude into his bones.  
  
  
As it is, he casts his gaze around for an anchor in the shifting sea of people and beshwa.   From amongst an excited group of laughing, chattering, dark-eyed teenagers of many clans and tribes,  _Chanu'ua's_  dark, dark eyes meet his for a moment, strangely expectant.  
  
  
Then he and Chanu'ua are being swept even further apart by a milling people and animals, all of which the stranger towers over.  
  
  


Night 147

  
  
"Aku'alaea?!"  
  
  
The Peoples' name for the stranger.  He thinks it means 'god's clay', or something equally quaint and poetic. At the moment, however, he's more concerned with the voice calling him. He drops the section of tent he was mending at the evening fire and stands, turning around just in time to get two armsful of relieved, ecstatic teenager. Not to mention kisses all over his face and throat, and wiry-strong arms and legs wrapping around neck and hips too tight to pry off.  
  
  
If the stranger were inclined to pry, which he is not. “You're alright--thank bloody Christ for favors big and small!” he says in the language only he knows.  
  
  
Even now, the language of the Peoples still sounds like gabble to him when someone who speaks as fast as Chanu'ua tends to is in an excited rush, to boot. But he can make out the words for  _raiders_  and  _hurt_  and  _safe_ , and then Chanu'ua's kissing him on the mouth hungrily, passionately.  
  
  
The stranger's own relief is such that he returns it without reservation, without care for the eyes of most of the clan on them.  
  
  
Chanu'ua tastes like the desert. Like dust and salt and water. . . .  
  
  
Raiders had attacked the small section of the herd Chanu'ua's older brother and several other young herdsmen--including Chanu'ua--had taken a few days north along the foothills of the mountains for better foraging. Similar herding groups had also gone south, and west, but Chanu'ua's group was the only one that was attacked.  
  
  
The raiders were able to grab a few of the beshwa, but due entirely to their vigilance, the shepherds had spotted the scouts almost immediately and driven off most of the herd. Then they, themselves, scattered to the winds and lost themselves among rock and scrub and caves.  
  
  
That had been four days ago. The beshwa that hadn't been captured had followed their noses back to the herd. All the shepherds had made it back, dehydrated and exhausted, but for one.  
  
  
Now, that one breaks the hectic kiss to gulp air and laugh. He's scraped, dirty, and unbearably young and lovely. The stranger's heart is so full, it feels like it must surely break in the presence of such ephemeral beauty, and under the onslaught of an all-consuming emotion that's as bitter as it is sweet.  
  
  
Looking into Chanu'ua eyes, he sees many things, remembers things he had forgotten. As he runs his finger along a scratch on the soft, dusty-downy curve of Chanu'ua's cheek, he wonders at the way the boy leans so contentedly into his touch.  
  
  
 _I've outlived everyone I've ever cared for. Even if I kept you safe in a fortress, death would eventually take you, too,_  he thinks, and hasn't yet the words to say. And it's just as well, because his feelings, though strong, are unsupported by anything other than the cold dread that's been gnawing at his gut and heart for the past few days.  
  
  
What is love and comfort in the face of death?  Of an  _eternity_  of loss?  
  
  
The stranger turns abruptly and marches out into the foothills--tent-mending forgotten, raiders bedamned--leaving Chanu'ua confused and gaping.  
  
  


Day 180

  
  
Herding is mind-numbingly dull, but easy enough.  
  
  
(Easier, say, than watching Chanu'ua step beyond the firelight with a stupidly smug Eha'Eha for eight nights in a row.)  
  
  
The stranger spends his time at herding on autopilot. He's a natural with any weapons he tries his hand at, including the sling, and bow and arrow. His eyes are keen--a killer's eyes, he knows without guilt or pride--and he handles would-be predators well before the other shepherds see them. Has his weapons put away before they've even registered he's brought something down.  
  
  
Mostly it's the snake-fast lizard things that live in the quicksand pits and dry-gullies, or the wild  _i'illo_ , scrub-dogs, that hunt the foothills. Twice, it's a lone scout from a raiding party. And instead of helping the shepherds build cairns for the corpses, the stranger says they should leave them there as a warning, studded with arrows or surrounded by bloodied rocks.  
  
  
 _Psychological warfare_ , he would tell them, but there isn't a word in the language of the Peoples for that concept. It's enough for his peers that his idea  _works_ , and after the first week, there are no more scouts to kill.  
  
  
Their group is gone from the clan for three weeks. One beshwa'ai is lost to the Sand Blindness, but none to raiding. They return to the clan as heroes, the stranger shying away from the praise of his fellow shepherds as he seeks out a pair of dark eyes that have haunted his waking and sleeping hours for most of a moon.  
  
  
He thinks he sees them before Kai'omu grabs him and drags him toward the first fire of the evening, gabbling about  _beer_  and fresh _'ono_  bread. About playing hide and seek with his daughters and stepping beyond the firelight with his wife Tai'in--  
  
  
When the stranger looks back over his shoulder, Chanu'ua isn't there.  
  
  


Night 180

  
  
The stranger's contemplative gaze follows Kai'omu and Tai'in to the limits of the firelight.  Then he glances across the fire, where Chanu'ua's sitting with his friends and pointedly ignoring the stranger's side of the fire.  
  
  
After being firmly refused, Eha'Eha had stormed off to the dormitory tent alone, and the stranger tells himself that the refusal means nothing. Most of the clan doesn't want to go off with Eha'Eha, but that doesn't mean any of them are waiting for the stranger to approach them, either.  
  
  
And yet. . . .  
  
  
Kicking himself for twelve kinds of fool, he ambles around the fire, feeling the eyes of the Peoples on him, of Chanu'ua's grandmother and brother. All amused and knowing when he stops in front of Chanu'ua, whose friends cease their chattering to stare at him like he's a talking beshwa'ai.  
  
  
“Chanu'ua,” he begins hesitantly, humbly, and still Chanu'ua won't look at him. He can't think of anything else to say in his halting command of the language of the Peoples. Of the many phrases he's picked up, or that the People have been kind enough to teach him, none include telling a young man that he is beautiful.  That one is sorry for a massive and hurtful lapse in judgment--and would like, more than anything, to take him beyond the firelight and spend the rest of the night proving it. . . .   
  
  
Humbled, yes, but not so much that he wishes to pantomime his desire before an audience of children.  
  
  
Finally, he holds out his hand, and says Chanu'ua's name once more, softly. Dark, wary eyes meet his, seem to stare into the depths of him for an age, before Chanu'ua takes his hand solemnly and stands.   
  
  
They walk slowly, not looking at each other, till they're beyond the glow of the firelight, and the snickers and whispers of the shamelessly prurient friends. Among the outermost ring of tents is the stranger's own. They stop, and Chanu'ua looks at him expectantly.  Opens his mouth to say something, and the stranger holds him close . . . picks up where they left off a moon ago.  
  
  
 _It's not like I would've understood what he said, anyway,_  the stranger reasons, amused at his own needy response to Chanu'ua's enthusiastic, breathless,  _aggressive_  kisses.  
  
  
After a few minutes, it becomes clear that the boy is torn between climbing him like a tree and dragging him into the tent, so the stranger decides the matter by picking him up and carrying him inside.  
  
  


Night 219

  
  
His enemy is much on his mind, lately.  
  
  
When he takes his sword out to practice in the night, after a short while, he finds himself simply standing, staring up at the stars and thinking-- _feeling_  with all his being:  
  
  
 _Where are you?  I am here.  Come to me, and we will finish this._  
  
  
There's never an answer.  Not as such.  Be he knows he is heard by . . . someone.  And that that someone is moving closer.  
  
  
 _He comes_ , the stars seem to flash in celestial semaphore.  The stranger agrees.  So he pits himself against this imaginary enemy--not physically, but mentally.  Tries to imagine how he'll attack, though that's pointless exercise.  But it forces him to remember every defense against every attack he knows.  There seem to be hundreds, if not thousands.  
  
  
Not for the first time, he wonders who he used to be and why he came back to this place.  
  
  
Before his wondering can become brooding, he hears the crunch and slide of feet on loose rock, and smiles.  Swings the sword in lazy, one- and two-handed slices--parries and blocks an invisible opponent, making his lunges and slices a little more showy than they have to be.  
  
  
When he's done, he bows to the unseen opponent--to the desert, surely a greater adversary than any he could ever hope to face.  
  
  
“You should be at rest,” he calls, just loudly enough. He still can only barely hear Chanu'ua's sure-footed step now that the hard-pan gravel is petering out to scrabble and dense sand.  He turns and watches his lover approach.  
  
  
Chanu'ua is small, sturdy, a bare-headed shadow in trews and one of the stranger's long, sleeveless cloaks, which nearly drags the ground on him. His smile is a tiny, uncertain version of the usual glowing one.  
  
  
“So should you. Even a warrior as great as you are is only as good as his last night's sleep,” he says softly, slowly. His voice is low, the aural equivalent of a caress, and the stranger shivers.  
  
  
“Were I still abed with you, on my oath, I would not be resting,” the stranger snorts, and sheaths his sword. “Is all well with you?”  
  
  
Chanu'ua stops just within arm's reach and takes a breath, as if he's preparing to march to war. They've been stepping beyond the firelight together every night of the past moon, and Chanu'ua is still strangely reticent about approaching him.  As if he's afraid the stranger will suddenly push him away if he hangs about too much or gets too close.  
  
  
It's still early enough in the . . . whatever they have, that the stranger finds this both cute and endearing.  He does hope, however, that this shyness will fade, and be replaced by the same sureness growing within himself.  
  
  
“All is right when I am with you,” Chanu'ua says finally, and steps a little closer, questions he's not quite brave enough to ask shining in his eyes. “When I woke, I was alone, and missed your arms around me.”  
  
  
"I was restless, and didn't want to disturb you with pointless brooding," he says gently, in the language only he knows.  Then taps his temple wryly when he remembers he's the only one who knows it.  “My mind is too heavy with thought. I meant only to let you rest,” he adds in the language of the Peoples, and Chanu'ua nods his understanding. Then closes the distance between them and reaches up to brush the same spot the stranger had.  His fingertips are calloused and cool.  Teasing, as they trail down his face, over cheekbone and beard-scruff.  Down adam's-apple and collarbone. . . .  
  
  
The stranger's breath hitches when Chanu'ua's fingers brush his nipple.  Fingers are shortly replaced by lips and teeth.  By playful, lasciviously slow swipes of tongue.  
  
  
The stranger isn't the only one who learns quickly.  And he isn't the only one who wants. He plunges his hands into Chanu'ua's braids, till the beads and stones bite into his palm.  He feels the wounds close before blood has a chance to well out.  
  
  
“Take me back to your pallet, Aku'alaea,” Chanu'ua murmurs between warm, wet kisses that range across chest and sternum.  
  
  
The stranger pushes his cloak down Chanu'ua's bare shoulders. “Perhaps I'll just take you,” he says as the cloak puddles around their feet. It'll make a more than adequate pallet.  
  
  


Night 302

  
  
"So, you will stay with us, Aku'alea."   
  
  
It's Wan'ii's way to ask questions that are really statements.  There's an air to him of someone who sees the reality he wants superimposed on the reality that is.  And damned if he'll bend before the two versions of reality match up in his favor.  Especially when he has a personal stake in the outcome.  
  
  
The stranger scans the horizon.  "I have no plans to leave the Peoples," he says finally, and both men are aware that it's not a direct answer.  It's become plain that the stranger has grown more restless in recent moons.  He volunteers for sentry duty more often than anyone in the clan--something Chanu'ua isn't exactly pleased with, though the stranger has been careful to make up for his nightly absences by turning the boy into an unconscious, wrung-out puddle of shepherd during the noon-hours halts.  
  
  
"My brother would share your tent, if you asked him," Wani'i mentions after a few minutes of thoughtful silence.  His eye is nearly as keen as the stranger's, and he's loosed a deadly-accurate shot at a scrub-dog.  Another lean year looms ahead, if they're venturing this far away from the fringes and foothills.  
  
  
"Your brother already shares my tent, Wan'ii, and has done so for several moons."  
  
  
Wan'ii makes a sound, neither agreeing or disagreeing.  Though Chanu'ua does indeed share the stranger's tent and has every night since the first--he no longer keeps his pallet in the large "dorm" tent many of the unmarried teenage boys share--their unspoken arrangement, though mutually beneficial, is not a marriage.  
  
  
"If you're waiting for the blessings of my grandmother and I, you must know you have them, have had them since the beginning."  
  
  
Ah, a change in tactics.  Wan'ii won't be letting him off with half-answers and polite evasions.  But how can the stranger possibly explain his feeling that whatever he came here to do, whomever he's here to find, is close, now?  That whatever showdown or confrontation awaits him isn't terribly far off?  That some days, he's certain it may be better to wander off into the wastes than bring what may be his doom down on the heads of the Peoples?  On  _Chanu'ua_?  
  
  
"A destiny waits for me, Wan'ii, and it may not be a good one," he says carefully, sneaking glances at Wan'ii's profile.  He's only a few inches shorter than the stranger, with finer, grimmer features than his younger brother, and longer braids with feathers in them instead of stones.  He makes no sound when he moves.  
  
  
"My brother is your destiny, Aku'alaea--everyone in the clan accepts this but you.  Anything else your future holds is but a sandstorm to be weathered.  And as you know, two together survive a storm better than one."  
  
  
"Perhaps," the stranger admits reluctantly.  "But the only thing less clear than my past is my future.  I'm wary of the darkness that waits ahead.  I can't see past it no matter how hard I try.  I care too much for Chanu'ua to let some evil in my life spill over into his--to let him get too attached to me, in case. . . ."  
  
  
The stranger shakes his head and paces a little ways toward the mountains.  The night is crisp and dry, and there's no haze anywhere, even at the witching hour.  
  
  
"In case my life very shortly becomes utterly fucked," he mutters, in the language only he knows, though  _utterly fucked_  likely comes across in any language.  
  
  
Wan'ii lays a hand on his shoulder and the stranger looks at him, expecting more fortune-cookie wisdom.  Doesn't expect the smile he finds.  For one thing, Wan'ii almost never smiles, and for another . . . ye gods, it's like seeing the future.  Seeing Chanu'ua once his growing years are past, and life has taken a little--not a lot--of the shine off that dazzling smile and bright personality.  
  
  
"I think I see, now," Wan'ii says, squeezing the stranger's arm more companionably than he ever has.  "Chanu'ua was wise to give his heart to you.  You'll make a good husband."  
  
  
"That's debatable."  The stranger snorts, and feels frustrated.  Out-plotted and out-classed.  The term  _chicken-little_  drifts across his waking mind and he wonders what a small bird has to do with the price of beshwa at market.  "Sixteen cycles may not be too young to have a husband, but it  _is_  far,  _far_  to young to be a widower!"  
  
  
"It would be a sad thing, indeed, to lose a mate so early in life," Wan'ii agrees, at his phlegmatic best.  "You would do well to settle this business quickly then, and not keep Chanu'ua waiting too long."  
  
  
"Listen, Wan'ii--"  
  
  
"The i'illo are emboldened by hunger, tonight," Chanu'ua's brother observes mildly, signaling that as far as he's concerned, the previous conversation is over, the previous problem resolved.  In this, he and Chanu'ua could be twins, except that where this insistence on having his own way is both exasperating and adorable in equal measures when it's Chanu'ua, when it's Wan'ii, it's simply frustrating.  
  
  
Nevertheless between his bow, and Wan'ii's sling, they make short work of the starving dogs slinking across the starlit horizon.  Afterward they speak of other things, when they feel the need to speak at all.  
  
  


Day 390

  
  
"Who were you . . . before you came among the Peoples?"  
  
  
Above the stranger, Chanu'ua is rocking in time to the pulse of their bodies, and the steady winds battering and buffeting the foothills outside the caves.  
  
  
It's not a sandstorm, but almost. In the deep desert, winds of this magnitude and duration, would be a man-killing, dune-tossing calamity. In the foothills, it's a little more than a minor annoyance. Enough that several clans that they know of have battened down in the system of caves and cul de sacs at the foot of the mountains and not for the first time. Till the windstorm subsides--anywhere from several more hours to several more days--they'll weather it out in these caves, before moving  further north in the hills they summer in.  
  
  
Their tents are pitched close and low to preserve space in cramped quarters.  As a result, privacy is almost nonexistent.  After the first day of catching up on mending, and pretending not to hear what was going on in many other tents, Chanu'ua had finally handed the stranger the small container of salve and began quickly and efficiently unlacing their trews.  
  
  
Now, after the minimum seemly amount of foreplay, the stranger smiles and runs his hands up Chanu'ua thighs, pushing up the light blue over-tunic. Chanu'ua quickly yanks it off, leaving him naked and gold-burnished in the very dim lamplight.  
  
  
In another life, this lovely boy would've been the crown jewel of an entire harem of the same.  
  
  
“Tell me who you were before you were Aku'alaea,” Chanu'ua gasps, throwing his head back when the stranger grips his hips and begins thrusting in earnest, sweat forming and immediately cooling in the pervasive chill of the cave.  
  
  
This is first time any of the clan has been curious enough to ask about his life before they knew him. He's not sure what to say--or even how to say it. He's not sure how much of what little he remembers is truly memory, and how much is his brain filling in holes with fantasy and conjecture.  
  
  
“Before the Peoples, I . . . was a warrior, as you've guessed. Long-lived, hunted for and haunted by what I was--the lives I'd lived, and the power I'd accrued in them. And there was no one. Not a person I could trust, because there could be only one, and. . . .” the stranger realizes his mouth is getting ahead of his memory and pauses. What he's saying has the ring of truth, but he's unsure how much truth he's ready to tell.   
  
  
Chanu'ua eyes are half-lidded with desire, but alert. He's not only hearing every word, but listening intently. The stranger laughs a little, and levers himself up--is met halfway with a lingering kiss. “Before I was Aku'alaea of the Peoples, I had no one,  _was_  no one. Before you . . . I was nameless and alone. You and the Peoples are everything I value in this life.”  
  
  
“Oh,” Chanu'ua exhales, his eyes wide and suspiciously wet before screwing shut. “Aku'alaea, oh--” he gasps, his body arching rigidly backward, one hand on their pallet for balance, the other still stroking himself but frantically, arhythmically, now. Memories and questions are at last lost to them both.  
  
  
Their cries of completion aren't the only ones echoing in the cave, nor are they the loudest. But to the stranger's ears, they're certainly the sweetest.  
  
  
And when Chanu'ua collapses on top of him, in the deep, immediate sleep of the young and sated, the stranger follows right after, without stopping to brood.  
  
  


Night 500

  
  
He's just relieved Kai'omu for the dog watch, when he sees it: a flash of light in the night sky that the makes a controlled descent far to the northeast.  On the other side of the mountains, where the Peoples never venture.  
  
  
Long after the light has disappeared behind the peaks, the stranger feels the announcement, the reply--the only one he'll receive--in the marrow of his bones:  
  
  
 _I am here.  I wait,_  this momentary thrum means.  The stranger smiles grimly; something in him settles for the first time since he was found raving and thirsting to death twenty yards from an oasis.  He unsheaths the sword he is now never without, and salutes the mountains sardonically.  
  
  
"And I come," he promises.  
  
  


Night 503

  
  
Chanu'ua doesn't understand, but he tries.  Though his heart is breaking, and the pain of it spills heedlessly down his cheeks, he tries.  
  
  
The stranger doesn't understand himself--not exactly.  He tells what little he's sure of and feels the rightness of in his gut, but when he tries to remember more . . . it's too jumbled, too unbelievable, too  _big_  to look at directly.  
  
  
The journey to the mountains will take at least a moon, and through the mountains themselves, perhaps twice that. Further, still, beyond the foothills on the other side. . . .  
  
  
He'll have plenty of time for other looks.  Right now, all that matters is the face of this boy as he tries not to crumple with anguish.  Anguish that his lover is causing him.  
  
  
"But why  _must_  you go?"  Chanu'ua asks, his voice cracking.  He wipes away tears with impatient swipes.  "Why can't he stay on his side of the mountains, and you stay with the Peoples, where you  _belong_ , and no one has to die?"   
  
  
"If I don't go to my enemy, he will come to me, and that's . . . not something anyone wants.  By hook or by crook, Chanu'ua, there can be only one.  If that one is me, I will return," he says simply, and it's as if something else speaks for him, something old and powerful and indifferent to the tears of something that's lived scarcely longer than a mayfly.  
  
  
Chanu'ua searches his eyes helplessly, appearing to grow more worried, not less.  Then he shakes his head and sighs.  "See to it that it is  _Aku'alaea_  who returns to me," he eventually says, and that ancient watcher in the stranger's skull subsides.  
  
  
"It may be a season . . . or several, but I--" he wants to promise he'll be back, but both of them know that he would be making an empty promise.  The stranger is a fine warrior, but his enemy is likely as good, if not better.  And even before that task, the mountains, which no one in living memory has crossed and returned from.  
  
  
Chanu'ua ducks his head again, hiding fresh tears.  The trinkets in his hair click sadly, accusingly, and the stranger pulls him into his arms.  He's surprised to find the boy shaking violently, but still silently.  
  
  
“You'll be careful, won't you?  I've been having dreams--the same dream over and over about you leaving, and it feels like a  _true_ -dream,” he whispers in a rush, his breath coming hot and moist on the stranger's neck in a self-mocking laugh.  "And yes, I know you think such things silly, and I would never have bothered you with it, but--"  
  
  
“Hush," the stranger murmurs.  "Tell me your dream, and I will listen with an open mind.”  
  
  
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Chanu'ua goes on:  “I dreamed that one night we walked beyond the firelight, as we do every evening, and when we reached your tent . . . I stopped and could go further. But you kept walking, beyond the very last tents, out into the desert. You walked and walked away from me . . . through the foothills and the mountains.  You fought bandits, and wolves, and a great beast . . . and still you walked, until you reached the very edge of the world.  
  
  
"Stars shone above and below you. In front of you. And behind you there was only the mountains and the beast, the desert and the Peoples . . . and me. You smiled at me, and flew off to the stars, and I wept. And you never came back.”  
  
  
There's carefully repressed panic in Chanu'ua's low, lilting voice, and the way he clutches at the stranger's under-tunic.  
  
  
"You must know that no dreams, no mountains, no threat would keep me away from home longer than absolutely necessary."  
  
  
Chanu'ua laughs, tear-logged and miserable. “You  _are_  away from home, Aku'alaea. You are not of the desert, or the mountains, or even the plains on the other side. You are not of the Peoples, even the farthest-ranging tribes."  He sits back to look at the stranger, red-eyed and wet-faced.  In this moment, the stranger is walloped.  
  
  
Sometimes he forgets how young--how impossibly  _new_  Chanu'ua is.  How unique and immeasurably precious for that, and many other reasons.  
  
  
“The stars have nothing to offer me, Chanu'ua of the Peoples,” he murmurs, smiling. “My arms are too tired to fly so far from home again, my wings too singed.”  
  
  
"A longing for loved ones and familiar faces may yet give a tired bird wings anew,” Chanu'ua replies with the angsty certainty of the young and in-love.  There's another tickle of memory, something dark and huge that the stranger ruthlessly tamps down.    
  
  
“The clan's faces are the only faces familiar to me now, and you are the only one I love.”  Chanu'ua's sits back, his eyes wide.  Before he can speak, the stranger-- _Aku'alaea_  forges ahead with the rest of the marriage oath.  “If you would share my tent and my pallet, my food and my fire until our days are done, nothing in the universe would keep me away from your arms, or the arms of your clan.”  
  
  
Chanu'ua quickly turns his goggle-eyed, gobsmacked expression into a face more suited to this private recitation of the marriage oath.  
  
  
“I will share your tent and your pallet, your food and your fire, until our days are done,” he whispers, his lips twitching with wanting to smile, to laugh--a striking contrast with the sudden, renewed flow of tears.  "And nothing in the universe will take you from my arms, and the arms of my clan."  
  
  
Aku'alaea lets out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding--lets himself be carried away by the moment. His reasons for not, for waiting this long, for enduring Wan'ii's blandly disappointed looks, have all deserted him. He can only marvel at the time he's wasted. "I love you, Chanu'ua."  
  
  
"And I love you, my husband."  
  
  
Said without hesitation or artifice, as if he's been saying it for decades.  Aku'alaea, however, is momentarily rocked backward. He's a married man, with a husband who loves him, and whom he in return adores beyond all coherent meaning of the word.  
  
  
 _Each time, I tell myself: never again, and each time, I know that someday, I will make a liar of myself,_  he thinks wryly, but doesn't pursue the thought.  If there have been other marriages with other bright-eyed youths, let them remain forgotten.  All he wants or needs is the boy gazing so earnestly into his eyes at this moment.  
  
  
Chanu'ua kisses him, tasting of hope and innocence, of youth and tears.  Like the life suddenly Aku'alaea can't imagine walking away from, even if it's to preserve it.  He laughs bitterly, and Chanu'ua brushes soothing fingers across his cheek.  
  
  
"Such a grand  _honeymoon_  we'll have," he apologizes wryly, and Chanu'ua's smooth brow crinkles in question.  "It's a . . . tradition where I came from. A newly-married couple would go off together for a few days, or a few weeks, even, to celebrate their wedding, away from family and responsibility."  
  
  
"That sounds selfish--and amazing," Chanu'ua sighs wistfully.  "Imagine whole days spent making love, not having to worry about the herd, or the clan . . . it must be wonderful."  
  
  
"It would be, with you," Aku'alaea says, winning from his love a smile so bright it makes the tears that frame it almost negligible.  Almost.  
  
  
That night, they don't go to the fire for dinner, songs and stories.  On this, their wedding night, they stay sequestered in their tent.  They don't speak further, the silence between them unbroken except by soft, half-stifled moans of  _Aku'alaea_. By the sweet, joyous cry of pleasure their bodies become on what may be their first and last night as a wedded couple. . . .  
  
  
When the light of the moon wanes, he gently slips out of his husband's arms.  Chanu'ua frowns in his sleep, no hint of that glorious smile.  
  
  
"Don't dream until I get back," Aku'alaea kisses onto full, curving lips. Though it'd be impossible to steal enough kisses to keep him from missing . . . just this.  
  
  
He's already homesick and heartsore, but in moments, he's dressed and retrieving his pack and the sword--the  _Ivanhoe_  from next to their pallet.  Minutes after that, he's striding quickly across the hard-pan, the  _safe journey, quick return_ s of Kai'omu and Novi echoing into silence behind him.  
  
  


Day 571

  
  
At the highest pass of the mountains, he can see for what looks like a thousand miles east, and what he sees is a vast, cracked plain of destruction.  
  
  
Arid, almost to the point of being barren, stretching onward as far as even his eyes can see, dotted with small bodies of water around which stunted, unhealthy trees grow amongst rusted metal junk, and moldy concrete boulders.  
  
  
He can see things that may once have been great ships for traveling on the water, and beneath it. He sees the bare bones of things that once hurtled through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, carrying passengers safely--more or less--to distant destinations.  
  
  
He sees the last, crumbling remains of hundreds of tall structures, a few struts and girders pointing rustily, defiantly at the sky they once scraped.  
  
  
“I've crossed the Mighty Pacific on foot,” Aku'alaea wheezes to himself, and chuckles wearily, though he's not sure what at. He hasn't been able to keep proper track of how high he's climbed, but he knows the oxygen is decidedly thin, and he's afraid to sleep. To sleep up here might mean eternity spent dying of suffocation.  
  
  
It's best not to linger, then. Time to find safe ways out of the mountains, to the dead and moldering plain.  
  
  
 _That clutch of metal and stone was Los Angeles,_  the watcher, the Librarian in his skull informs him dryly, an indifferent automaton. _Or San Diego, perhaps. Without what once passed for a skyline on the west coast, it's nearly impossible to tell, anymore. But the ruins we want were once called_ Seacouver _, and lie further north, still._  
  
  
That name means nothing to Aku'alaea, nor does he want it to. It's an old name, for an old city. Saying it aloud would taste like dust and stale decay.  
  
  
 _New York City had a nobler skyline, anyway,_  the Librarian further informs him. Morosely, and it's the first hint of humanity this voice has ever shown.  _But it's gone, like all those others. Londinium and Rome, Alexandria and Memphis, Carthage and Athens--my Athens! The Forbidden City . . . all dust, now. Gone to ruin. . . ._    
  
  
Aku'alaea of the Peoples slowly picks his way downward--it's still a moon, or more to the place of the final Gathering--letting the Librarian natter. It distracts him from his own thoughts, which invariably turn to a beautiful boy, waiting for him just beyond the firelight. . . .  
  
  


Day 609

  
  
Aku'alaea doesn't know how long he's lain at the bottom of the chasm--doesn't, thankfully, recall the height he fell from, or the time it took him to hit bottom.  
  
  
He also doesn't remember how many times he's died and come back, only that some of the times were whole eternities long, filled with pains that killed him again and again, until one day, he woke up, half in the shade of a rock stained red in places.  
  
  
He'd hit it hard on the way down, and at some point afterward dragged his broken body under it to get away from the sun.  
  
  
When he's able to move, he discovers the last of the beshwa jerky in his pack (which is still on his back) is still edible, though shoe-leather tough from heat and salt. It stings his swollen, dry mouth, but he makes himself chew. There are a few swallows of water left in his last water-skin and he drinks one of them, and curls up in the shade.  
  
  
Dozes, until the sun westers and the day cools. It's still bright enough to see, but at least the sun is no longer shining directly overhead.  
  
  
Time to climb, then.  
  
  
Aku'alaea slowly, painstakingly follows the trail of dried blood back up the ravine for a second time. On a ledge, two thirds of the way up, he finds his sword, the sheath torn and unusable as such. He fashions a belt of his torn, filthy under-tunic, knots it securely to the cracking sheath, and climbs on.  
  
  
The Librarian in his head occasionally urges him on faster, but falling into a crevasse once was enough for any lifetime, no matter how long.  
  
  
He ignores the nattering nutter, and concentrates only on the next hand-hold.  
  
  


Night 629

  
  
The lake is large, and nearly fills an even larger sunken basin.  
  
  
Aku'alaea had let his curiosity take him out of his way, and up to what he'd thought would be a plateau.  
  
  
He doesn't know what, on a barren plateau, would be worth prolonging his journey--  
  
  
 _Heather-covered moors, fields of wheat, ivory towers, streets of gold . . . a pretty bit of shine to take back to your pretty bit of fluff. Standard sentimentalist bullshit, and sentiment doesn't win prizes, never mind_ the _Prize_ , the Librarian says with unexpected cruelty.  
  
  
The days of its only occasional, dispassionate observations are long over.  
  
  
Gazing placidly at Lake St. Helens, Aku'alaea takes out his flint knife--it's always within easy reach, and not just for hunting--and jams it deep hilt-deep into his thigh.  
  
  
He's learned, at this late date, through trial and error, how not to hit arteries or glance it off of bone.  
  
  
The pain would be unimaginable, had he not grown so used to it. Which isn't to say it hurts less, but the hurt is manageable. Mostly by briefly losing consciousness several times, till his body's adjusted to the knife well enough to put weight on the leg . . . at which point he staggers and limps his way back down the side of the St. Helens caldera. Through saplings, and trees, and grass that seems extravagantly green to eyes used to desert duns and ochers. To the soothing grey-green and purple of mountain-grasses.  
  
  
 _That lake really was quite large,_  he probes the sudden, yawning void inside himself. There's nothing there to answer him, for the time being: no Librarian, no hunger, no loneliness, no want. Which is good.  
  
  
But no Chanu'ua, which is, in a word: calamitous.  
  
  
Momentarily panicked, he twists the knife slowly in his leg and blacks out for a controlled moment, a brief, comforting, euphoric darkness that's soft and deep, like Chanu'ua's eyes. . . .  
  
  
. . . when the world begins to grey in again, green and ridiculous, he growls, and yanks the knife out, sending his instantly unconscious body tumbling down the steep incline, and his unconscious mind hurtling across the moons and miles.  
  
  


Night 651

  
  
  
There's a strange roaring in his blood, has been for two days.  
  
  
Lately, since he left the ancient, dwindling forestlands, he actually hears that roaring in his ears louder than his heartbeat. The plain he's crossing is green and fertile, like so many in these northern traces. There've been times he wanted to lie down and simply die in all the cool and green, but he hasn't earned that.  
  
  
And even if he had, no silly patch of clover could compare to a soft pallet beyond the firelight, and the arms of the lad who loves him true. . . .  
  
  
Muttering to himself in languages that've been dead for longer than the distance between this galaxy and the next, he trudges barefoot into the final valley, towards a flicker of firelight off of something large and metallic. Ancient brick and bits of glass crunch under feet toughened by moons of walking and solitude, even as his mind has been rendered brittle, and fragmented by the same.  
  
  
The thud, the  _Quickening_ , is so strong, he can barely think. Its insistence is a respite from the dissolution devouring him with each and every step he takes.  
  
  


The Night of The Gathering: Aku'alaea

  
  
_With the setting of the sun, the end of an era,_  he thinks with calm detachment, only he's not sure if it is he, Aku'alaea, or the Librarian. The flint knife might be able to tell him, but he'd lost it falling down St. Helens and into Chanu'ua's arms.  
  
  
“Never been alone for this long, before. I'm clearly cracking up,” he informs the metallic vessel, in the language only he speaks. She's larger than a bread-box, but smaller than an 03-K64 Firefly-class freighter. He doesn't recognize her markings or lines, or know whose flag she flies under, if any.  
  
  
On her right flank, in chipped, but still-bright lilac paint, is a name he can read if he concentrates:  _Amanda_.  
  
  
The name seems to fit her. She's sleek, and fast looking. Made for maneuverability, not conflict or cargo. But she's probably also loaded with all sorts of delightful, deadly surprises.  
  
  
He pats her side companionably as he passes her, and gets a hollow, reverberating clank that should announce his presence nicely. Likely no one home, on a fine, cool evening like this. Maybe his enemy is off hunting the small game that abounds in the northlands. As in the desert, the world truly comes to life once the glowing sky-ball of red death has sunk almost below the horizon.  
  
  
Though its angry light still inflames the hemisphere with a sullen, parting glow.  
  
  
But never mind all that.  
  
  
“Off to find your captain, lovely girl. Take his head, and the Prize. Perhaps, once this is over, you and I'll run off to a cozy little desert I know,” he says almost dreamily.  
  
  
“That's baselessly optimistic of you,” a familiar, unfamiliar voice says from his left, in a language only two people on this desert-planet still speak.  
  
  
Aku'alaea smiles, but doesn't start. Emotionally and mentally, he's too exhausted to be startled. “Not entirely baseless,” the Librarian answers for them both, leaving Aku'alaea the relatively easy job of turning their humming, buzzing body to face this stranger.  
  
  
Fading westerlight reveals a face that seems as familiar to him as his own, but squarer and handsomer, where his own face is long, and a pensive grab-bag of mismatched features. The stranger is clean shaven and neatly shorn, dark hair combed back from a high, unlined brow.  
  
  
Aku'alaea's own hair straggles greasily, dirtily down his back, and is home to wildlife he chooses not to contemplate.  
  
  
(The less said about his patchy beard, just filling in after several weeks of no knife, the better.)  
  
  
The stranger leans rather too nonchalantly against the left landing assembly, in clothes that are strange to Aku'alaea's eyes: trousers and tunic made of some loose, matte-black fabric, and high leather boots. At his side, in an old, functional scabbard, is a slender sword. A  _katana_.  
  
  
Empty, haunted eyes under brooding brows take Aku'alaea's measure, and if he ever knew this person, other than as knot of bitterness, regret, and grim respect he cannot now untangle, that memory is also lost to him.  
  
  
The Librarian has gone utterly, eerily mum.  
  
  
 _I could feel his Quickening in the marrow of my bones from two days walk away.  I'm not likely to win this,_  Aku'alaea realizes, and his strength tries to flee him in one great rush. But he holds firm. He may die tonight, but he won't make it easy for the bastard.  
  
  
As if reading his very thoughts, the stranger smiles a little. Approvingly. “Been a long time, Old Man,” he says warmly, but all of a sudden there's a clangor in Aku'alaea's head--an excruciating hue of feelings and memories that overwhelm him. Destroy him, and rebuild him in the space of moments, leaving him gasping and heaving, leaning on the  _Amanda_  just to stay upright.  
  
  
Those dark, dead eyes flicker and the stranger steps forward slowly. Aku'alaea staggers backward, nearly falling, and the stranger stops, his hands held up in a timeless gesture of  _calm down_.  
  
  
“Methos--” he starts, and the agony in Aku'alaea's head intensifies, till it becomes vertiginous nausea that drives him to his knees. He does not recognize this word  _Methos_ , but for the pall it casts on his heart. Like  _Seacouver_ , it tastes of stale decay.  
  
  
"I am Aku'alaea of Clan Red Beshwa, of the Peoples Beyond The Mountain Range," he says--shakily at first, but his voice firms on the word  _Peoples_ \--and for the first time, he  _knows it_. Knows that he  _is_  of the Peoples, just like he knows water runs downhill and that here, this Earth and the few remaining people on it are all he'll ever want or need.  
  
  
Suddenly, the stranger's world-shaking Quickening is worth a lot less than it has been these past two days. For unlike this weary, dead-eyed ancient,  _Aku'alaea_ 's got something to live for. Something to  _fight_  for. There's a prize waiting for him greater than any to be had over the headless corpse of a great foe: a good life, with a good mate and good people. And at the end of that life. . . .  
  
  
At the end of it,  _he_  will finally, finally  _end_ , as he should have done a thousand-thousand millennia ago. . . .  
  
  
Yes, if he's lucky, his prize will be a human lifespan, and a natural death in Chanu'ua's arms.  _That_ , indeed, would be enough. All that he has ever wanted, in fact.  
  
  
He gets to his feet slowly, under the hooded gaze of the stranger, who smiles as ironically as Aku'alaea ever has.  
  
  
“I take it from that steely look of renewed determination, you're . . . ready to rumble?”  
  
  
Aku'alaea nods once.  
  
  
“For the Prize of prizes?”  
  
  
Aku'alaea draws the Ivanhoe. Let's the ring of cold, hungry steel and a vulpine grin reply for him.  
  
  
"Excellent. Let's get on with it, then." Business-like, the stranger advances, drawing his own blade.  
  
  
The battle is engaged.  
  
  


The Night of The Gathering: Chanu'ua

  
  
Beyond the firelight and walking sentry during the first watch of the night--as he has nearly every night for the past six moons--Chanu'ua  looks to the eastern skies, to the mountains, still so far away.  
  
  
Nothing, but crisp, cold, star-flecked black.  
  
  
Still, he watches.  
  
  
Long past the time Kai'omu saunters up to relieve him, he's still staring into the sky, into his future.  
  
  
Just before moon-set, and just after Kai's given up on getting a word out of him and settled in to keep an eye on the eastern approach--and on his friend's husband, just as everyone's been doing for moons.  The entire clan agrees that when Aku'alaea left, he took his husband's spirit with him--the sky comes alive with a roar and rumble:  
  
  
Blinding, blue-white dawn expands till it fills most of the sky, and wreathes the crown of the mountain range in thunder and lightning.  That strange rumble grows louder, like the rasping, angry death-cry of a leviathan of a mountain-cat.  It's not until they see dust and grit kicking up high enough to obscure the foothills that they realize it's the roar of the wind, tossing boulders like soil, and uprooting trees like twigs--rushing through the mountain traces as if it would  _tear_  the very mountains asunder.  
  
  
"Gods' mercy!"  Kai exclaims, wide-eyed and startled, but unafraid.  Chanu'ua's taken several steps toward the mountains when his worried keeper grabs him, pulls him back.  "Hold on, little brother!  Where are you off to?  What  _is_  that?"  
  
  
The roar is starting to die down, as is the wind-driven furor of debris, thought it's likely to become a minor dust storm in the day or so it takes to reach Chanu'ua's people.  But there are still faint flashes in the sky, nearly lost now in the fading light of the false dawn. In the aftermath, the entire world seems to throb laboriously like a giant, wounded heart.  
  
  
“By the gods, I can smell lightning on the air from this distance! I feel sorry for anything caught in  _that_!" Kai says in the smallest voice anyone's ever likely to have heard from  _him_.  And there's fear, too, laced through it.  
  
  
In this moment, Aku'alaea's promise is no longer enough.  The promise of that cold, ancient stranger who sometimes lurks in Aku'alaea's boyish face and mild eyes is not enough.  But Kai is both stronger and larger than Chanu'ua, so though he struggles, he cannot break free.  And even if he could . . . he would die of exposure weeks before he reached even the foothills.  
  
  
Aku'alaea would return to learn he'd run off in a fit of madness and died on the hard-scrabble like a beshwa'ai with Sand Blindness. . . .  
  
  
Chanu'ua either has nothing or everything left to lose, and no way of knowing for the better part of a cycle.   
  
  
He sags in Kai's arms, his strength and fight gone, to be replaced by a strange, featureless calm. At its center is a maelstrom too violent, and ruthlessly condensed to touch, or even acknowledge. "That's it, then.  He's done it."  
  
  
"Who's done what? Chanu!" Kai shakes him briefly, darting frightened glances between Chanu'ua's face and the glowing eastern sky. "Stop acting crazy and  _talk to me_!  Was that light something to do with  _Aku'alaea_? Everyone knows he went up into the mountains to battle some great evil--is  _that_  what that light was?"  
  
  
Chanu'ua offers his friend a mask-like smile, and says with cool confidence the only words that will ever come to him when he is asked about the events of this night--no matter how many moons and cycles have passed since:  
  
  
"That light was my husband, letting me know he's on his way home."  
  



End file.
